Commandment 2: You must sell everythingMatthew 19: 21-24 - Verse 21 does not say "If you want to go to heaven, " it says, "If you want to be perfect." 21-24 is the setup to Jesus' teaching.

Thanks for the Word from Rome on these questions. I agree with your point about the military.

But you would be disappointed if I did not mildly disagree with your other interpretation. The rich young man was called out. He thought he could simply “be Christian” without further ado. Jesus challenges him to see how much he wanted to be Christian – apparently he did not want it as much as he wanted his money. So he is now roasting on the Devil’s spit, not because he was bad but because his parents were rich and he only knew that life. Perhaps he was rich but that's not a sin, but his love of money was greater than his love of God (If he had been smart, he would have replied, "I have no money of my own, it is all in a trust fund in Assyria set up by my father - I am destitute..."

Why would Jesus say such a thing? Well, his audience were poor, He was empowering them by disempowering the rich boy. – Rhetoric for rabble-rousing.

(Also it excuses popes and the like who live in opulence that they technically do not own.)

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Luke 14:33 - This verse is in the context of a passage about recognizing the potential costs/benefits of discipleship and recognizing it as an all-in or all-out proposition. […] He does not say each possession must be literally sold and/or given away.

Again we have the “willingness” to set God before worldly possessions but as an example to the man with dropsy[1] whilst in the Pharisee’s house.

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Matthew 6:19, 24 - Again, this verse is about priorities. Jesus is saying that God must come first, not that no possessions can be kept. This is reiterated in verse 24, when Jesus says money should not be served as a "master."

and

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Luke 12:33 - Jesus is again talking about priorities, this time with respect to trusting God, as evidenced in verses 22-32, […] which of course is the moral to the parable cautioning against greed for Earthly possessions to the exclusion of God […] Now, I won't accuse this verse of being "out of context," but I will say that it's impossible to understand this verse properly without recognizing the dependencies noted above, plus the verse after it, plus the second half of the verse (Marshall only quoted half).

In both of these, it is important to see whom Jesus is addressing: He is addressing common folk. Poor people. So when he says

“M't:6:19: Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,”

Today, He might say, “Don’t have a Billionaire’s mansion and an Escalade, a yacht and a Lear Jet…” and his audience would say “Well, we wouldn’t, would we? It’s those rich bastards, we are better than them – we’ve got a head start, we don’t have to make those choices; they don’t apply to us – we’re headed for the Pearly Gates.”

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The point being, of course, that someone whose trust is in God does not need to worry about possessions,

This point is well made in the song "The Preacher and the Slave" with its chorus of “There’ll be Pie in the Sky when we die.”

This idea is the poor being OK when they're dead is so if, and only if, (i) there is a God, (ii) it’s the right God, (iii) you’re perfect and (iv) God capriciously thinks you are fitted for heaven… and this takes the shine off it.

My advice is to keep what you have and see if you can’t get a little more, wealth you might pass on to your children and ensure the satisfactory immortality of your genes, which is what we are here on earth for.

Or you can listen to Jesus and be dirt poor and ignorant all your life in the belief that being dead is good, and that you’ll get your own back in heaven. More to the point, Jesus (the all-knowing) says that there will always be poor people, and so, like any true capitalist, he lumps them together rather than doing something about them.

Whatever dude. Demonstrate this please. Really, I'm waiting for an demonstration of you loving your enemies and being willing to die for them. Otherwise, I'm compelled to call "bullshit".

That's fine. I'm not looking for any specific reaction to my views.

Dodge again.

You put the post up, all I'm doing is asking you to back it up with something. If you aren't willing to do so, why did you say it in the first place? Dying FOR your enemies? Really? Why should this be taken at face value with no challenge? And if you refuse to back this up, why should anything you say be given any consideration at all?

And once again, you skipped over the substance to respond to fluff. You're constant sidestepping is not being overlooked - you DO realize that, right?

« Last Edit: June 20, 2013, 12:45:38 PM by Jag »

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"Tell people that there's an invisible man in the sky that created the entire universe and the majority believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure." ~George Carlin

People often get romantic about doing things in foreign countries. Are you Catholic or something?

It has nothing to do with "romance". It has to do with trying to make the world a better place, something you seem to not be very concerned about. I worked in poor countries for a number of years and was also a inner city social worker in the US. As an atheist, with no thought of being rewarded in an afterlife.

And you did not address my main point: if the point of this life is to move on to the next more important level in heaven (or wherever) why not do some useful but very risky work so you can go there that much more quickly? There is a pressing need for people to remove land mines to save childrens' lives in wartorn countries.

If I had a terminal illness I might volunteer to do something like that with my remaining time on earth. You seem to think of earthly existence in a stinking human body as a terminal illness of a sort, so why don't you go to Afghanistan and help out?

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When all of Cinderella's finery changed back at midnight, why didn't the shoes disappear? What's up with that?

Christians talking about yahweh's and Jesus' enemies... lets really think about this. so, the so called creator of the universe, all powerful, god himself has enemies? what kind of enemies can he have? Furthermore, he wouldve had to have created his own enemies, with knowledge that theyd be enemies... then to suggest that yahweh jr died for the very enemies that he created TO BE his enemies is simply breathtakingly stupid. I am sorry, some stuff I just cant get past.

Christians talking about yahweh's and Jesus' enemies... lets really think about this. so, the so called creator of the universe, all powerful, god himself has enemies? what kind of enemies can he have? Furthermore, he wouldve had to have created his own enemies, with knowledge that theyd be enemies... then to suggest that yahweh jr died for the very enemies that he created TO BE his enemies is simply breathtakingly stupid. I am sorry, some stuff I just cant get past.

There are those that took the life of Jesus attempting to silence His message.

Whatever dude. Demonstrate this please. Really, I'm waiting for an demonstration of you loving your enemies and being willing to die for them. Otherwise, I'm compelled to call "bullshit".

That's fine. I'm not looking for any specific reaction to my views.

Dodge again.

You put the post up, all I'm doing is asking you to back it up with something. If you aren't willing to do so, why did you say it in the first place? Dying FOR your enemies? Really? Why should this be taken at face value with no challenge? And if you refuse to back this up, why should anything you say be given any consideration at all?

And once again, you skipped over the substance to respond to fluff. You're constant sidestepping is not being overlooked - you DO realize that, right?

What you look at, think about, and determine is your own business and I should not stick my nose into it. You'll find that comments like that get my attention and the rest get neglected as a result.

The teachings of Jesus are the subject of the post. "Christians: Why Do You Refuse To Obey Jesus? "One of them concerned being reborn. http://biblehub.com/john/3-5.htm

Yes thank you, I know very well what the subject of my OP is. But you were asked a specific question (it's happened many times now), and once again, you dodged it.

If you aren't interested in having any real honest and open discourse here, what is your point in being here?

I answer new questions not answered in other threads or on other forums. You have no way of knowing which questions I'm tired of answering, which ones I don't find interesting, which one I need to research first before answering, which topics I don't have a good background in, etc, etc,

Whatever dude. Demonstrate this please. Really, I'm waiting for an demonstration of you loving your enemies and being willing to die for them. Otherwise, I'm compelled to call "bullshit".

That's fine. I'm not looking for any specific reaction to my views.

Dodge again.

You put the post up, all I'm doing is asking you to back it up with something. If you aren't willing to do so, why did you say it in the first place? Dying FOR your enemies? Really? Why should this be taken at face value with no challenge? And if you refuse to back this up, why should anything you say be given any consideration at all?

And once again, you skipped over the substance to respond to fluff. You're constant sidestepping is not being overlooked - you DO realize that, right?

What you look at, think about, and determine is your own business and I should not stick my nose into it. You'll find that comments like that get my attention and the rest get neglected as a result.

In other words, you'll sidestep answering questions that request some sort of support. Got it.

No more difficult questions from me since you have no answers. Enjoy your visit.

It has nothing to do with "romance". It has to do with trying to make the world a better place, something you seem to not be very concerned about. <snip>

If you start a post like that, I have no reason to read further.

I too hate it when people start a post by addressing the content of my post. It's so annoying...as if they're trying to have a conversation or discussion of some kind in order to exchange information in hopes of learning something. What a pain in the rear.

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"When we landed on the moon, that was the point where god should have come up and said 'hello'. Because if you invent some creatures, put them on the blue one and they make it to the grey one, you f**king turn up and say 'well done'."

Christians talking about yahweh's and Jesus' enemies... lets really think about this. so, the so called creator of the universe, all powerful, god himself has enemies? what kind of enemies can he have? Furthermore, he wouldve had to have created his own enemies, with knowledge that theyd be enemies... then to suggest that yahweh jr died for the very enemies that he created TO BE his enemies is simply breathtakingly stupid. I am sorry, some stuff I just cant get past.

There are those that took the life of Jesus attempting to silence His message.

This is so incredibly dumb. It was always yahweh jr's plan to be killed... remember why he came?

There are those that took the life of Jesus attempting to silence His message.

Ooo, damn those villains! Those dirty bastards!

Except the whole thing was according to god's plan, right? And it needed to happen, right? Because if someone hadn't killed jesus H christ, then he would not have been a sacrifice to himself so he could forgive our sins. And the whole salvation by his grace thing would never have happened. And we would have been up shit creek. Doomed to hell forever without hope.

So, I guess rather than speak so poorly of those men who did yhwh's dirty work - and I include Judas in that number - we should be congratulating them and saint-o-fying them. That guy with the spear, should have his own statues. And the guy that beat the piss out of jesus H with the scourge, he gets his own order of monks. And we should be happy that the deity used them as he did. Because they did what had to be done to save us.

The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever (b/c he sacrificed himself to himself) if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity (which he implanted there in the first place) because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree.

I answer new questions not answered in other threads or on other forums. You have no way of knowing which questions I'm tired of answering, which ones I don't find interesting, which one I need to research first before answering, which topics I don't have a good background in, etc, etc,

Oh so basically you're not really interested in having an actual discussion then. You're just looking to poke and prod (like a troll) instead of actually putting some effort into it and practicing some intellectual honesty. So, you don't really care whether or not your beliefs are actually true (and you're not really interested in testing/challenging them to see if they stand up to logical rigor). You're just looking to fulfill your presupposition (like all of the other religions on the planet). Nice!

The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever (b/c he sacrificed himself to himself) if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity (which he implanted there in the first place) because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree.

Yeah, christianity makes sense.

You should mention that this is not your work. I'm sure you'd hate for somebody to mistakenly assune it is.

What you look at, think about, and determine is your own business and I should not stick my nose into it. You'll find that comments like that get my attention and the rest get neglected as a result.

"Oh please don't do that to us SkyDaddy. Please bless us by considering our arguments. We are here to please you and make you feel comfortable. We don't mind if your arguments are irrational and your attitude is dismissive. Please stay with us and teach us your 'higher' ways of thinking!"

Pfffff, Please...

Cut the crap Mr. hypocrisy. You "stuck your nose in it" the moment you began these discussions. And stop acting like we are vowing for your attention. We aren't. You came to us, remember? You come into our house acting like we should cow-tail for your 'consideration', as if your attention is some blessing that we are missing out on. Could your hubris be any larger?